


to delete this message press 4

by iimpavid



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Addiction, Canon-adjacent, Crime Scene Investigation, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27703706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: A voicemail sits on Juno's comms for three years... and then he deletes it.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 43





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**Author's Note:**

> Two fics in one night? Has she gone absolutely mad? 
> 
> Heed the tags, y'all, this one's not a happy time.

Crime scene photos are, by nature, impartial. There’s a stack of them inches high in the box of evidence associated with the murder of Benzaiten Steel.

The 24 hours allotted by Martian law to investigators to scour and document everything they can get their hands on to build a case doesn't leave a lot of room for picking and choosing what is and isn't relevant. After all, once they leave the premises, there's no going back. They have to get everything in one fell swoop. 

Juno thumbs through the photos with numb fingertips. His lips are cold and he knows, distantly, that he’s got less than five minutes left before Falco comes back from the coffee he’d asked for with his best Pathetic Oldtown Kid look. It was the blue eyes. Everyone fell for ‘em. Juno Steel’s deep blue eyes could charm blood from a stone and he knows it and he uses it to his advantage because it’s the only advantage he’s got in the world. So here he is sat on the floor of a room ominously labeled “EVIDENCE” with a filing cabinet jimmied open beside him and an active case file spread open on his lap.

It wasn’t like streams. The pictures were all straight-on angles that lead the viewer through the scene one room of the Oldtown apartment at a time, one piece of evidence at a time, in unforgiving light with rulers in necessary places to give a sense of scale. There's no chronology to them except the order in which evidence was tagged dictating the path that the photographer took through the scene. The camera doesn’t flinch, but Juno does.

The pictures in his hands are colder than the desert.

* * *

Mick hadn't heard from Juno Steel in exactly eleven months when he jerked awake in the middle of the night to the sound of his comms ringing. He was always forgetting to turn the sound off on the dang thing.

He might have mumbled an approximation of, “Hello?” into the receiver as he excavated his face from the burrito he’d made of his blankets.

It was Juno. Of all people on the other end of the line in the dead of night, it was Juno. "Mick. Mick, you gotta-- I don't know what to do." 

Eleven months is a long time to not hear a word from your best friend, especially after your best friend threw a bottle at your head and told you to stay out of his life, and Mick feels the weight of all 330 days. The bright red 2:00 blinking from Mick’s milk crate nightstand tells him he's going to have a rough time at tomorrow's interview. Then, two floors up Mx. Andrews’ dog starts howling. So Mick can be forgiven if he sounds more than _just_ tired when he asks, "Jay it's, like, 2 a.m., what's goin' on?" He might even be inching toward _irritated,_ lying there with his face halfway mashed into his old, flat pillow, knowing he’s gotta be up in five hours to get a job doing more than flipping pseudo-burgers. 

But Juno's breathing is harsh and fast and shallow-- that's what keeps Mick from hanging up. He sounds hurt when he says, " _messed up_." 

Mick blinks fully awake, pushes himself up on his elbows, "Wait-- okay, okay, what happened?"

"Mick, I deleted it."

" _What_?" 

"The rec-- the voicemail-- _Ben--_ I think I deleted it.” His voice breaks, “I can't find it anymore-- I deleted it." 

There's a moment of crystal clear, waiting-for-the-shoe-to-drop silence where Juno holds his breath and Mick realizes what he's talking about. "Oh _shit_. Oh no," it's a tone of grief that Mick falls into, one he knows doesn't match a fraction of what Juno's got to be feeling, "Juno--" Mick rolls upright, frantically groping for pants and coming up with duck-printed pajama bottoms.

"I thought I should finally just-- _gotta move on eventually,_ right-- but I can't breathe. I can't. I deleted it. Mick, I--" 

"I'm coming over right now." He interrupts as he shrugs into his jacket, hovercycle keys jingling in the pockets, frantically stumbling toward the door of his studio apartment.

"-- I don't know what to do. I'm dying." 

" _No_ ,” Mick corrects him because even if Juno doesn’t know what to do with this one, Mick knows with sudden confidence that runs bone-deep exactly how things need to happen from here: “Sit down and wait for me to get there. You're not gonna die. I’m coming." 

"I don't know-- I can't-- Don't hang up."

The sound of Mick's boots resounded rainfall-heavy in the stairwell; he would jump the railings between landings if he could afford to break something to get to Juno faster but that isn't an option on unemployment. Besides, that’d make him drop his comms. He can't afford to drop his comms. He can't fuck this one up. He pants, "I'm not hanging up, Juno, I'm just coming to your place."

"I'm not at home." 

"Then I'll pick you up. Tell me where you are." 

"I'm at-- I was at Paragon. I'm in the alley." 

"Okay, okay, I'll be there soon."

"Don't hang up." 

"I'm not gonna hang up on you, I promise. Tell me where you are.” 

“Outside Paragon, in the alley,” Juno repeats, still too shaky by half. He doesn’t even sound annoyed. 

Mick moves faster.

* * *

Unit 241 was spiteful, full of a mother's resentment. Even in the cold crime scene photos a yellow malaise lingered around the apartment's door that seemed to emanate from within it.

The living room was in shambles. Evidence of another patented Sarah Steel tantrum, nothing more. A toppled bookshelf in one corner. Blue velvet couch cushions, worn threadbare with age, were strewn across the floor. An Andromeda figurine lay in bright plastic pieces against the far wall. 

In the dine-in kitchenette, the square formica-topped table seemed harmless enough, like Sarah Steel hadn't spent countless nights sat at it in the dark, chain-smoking, the cherry of her cigarette lighting her face from below with a sinister, sick red light, glowing like the eye of a dragon in the dark. Broken glass and crockery littered the floor. Fresh vegetables sat in grocery bags on the counters. The tomatoes had spilled from a thin green plastic bag into the sink.

* * *

"You don't have to go home, Juno, but you can't stay here." 

Puck Falco can’t be old enough to be telling Juno what to do. He’s not old enough to be a detective either; Juno’s sure of it. There are too few lines around his eyes. His shoes are too shiny. He’s gotta be new.

It just figures, really. Mom goes off the deep end and ruins the last good thing in Juno’s life and the case gets handed off to some rookie.

Juno doesn’t go home. He sits there and tears well up in his big blue eyes and he says, “I can’t go home -- they haven’t cleaned up the crime scene yet.”

The young man across from him holds up remarkably well under the onslaught of Juno’s gaze. But then he folds with a sigh and that tells Juno all he needs to know: Detective Falco hasn’t paid enough attention to this case to know that the Steel twins are 19. Well, _Juno_ is 19; Ben is just dead. The thought makes him look down suddenly, blinking, a tear escaping despite his best efforts to _plop_ onto the knee of his jeans.

“Hey, don’t--” Falco stands up and reaches for Juno’s shoulder before thinking better of it. 

Juno’s too busy scrubbing at his face to notice. 

“Do you have anyone else I can call?” 

Juno sniffs. Thinks for a moment then says, “Mrs. Mercury? But she isn’t off ‘til 8.” 

Falco sighs again and checks his watch. There’s half an hour between now and then and he’s got to figure out something to do with this Juno Steel kid until then. “Alright--”

“I’m sorry,” Juno says. That’s a common theme in his life, people not knowing what the hell to do with him, “I can-- I’ll go wait outside or somethin’.” 

“There’s a sandstorm tonight,” Puck says immediately. “Just. Stay put. You drink coffee? I’ll get you some coffee.” 

Juno nods as pathetically as he can manage.

“Okay, great.” 

He listens to Falco walk away. No one’s looking at Juno, sat there in the cheap orange plastic chair at Falco’s desk, no one in his periphery anyway or the reflection of the convex mirror hung on the wall across the room. A few phones ring over the hum of typing and conversation but no one’s looking at Juno twice. Falco left his keys on the desk beside a tissue box.

Juno grabs a tissue and Falco's keys and walks toward the bathrooms-- still sniffling, presumably to go vent his grief-- then keeps on walking past the bathroom door and ut of sight.

* * *

Farther down in the stack of photos is the hallway.

When Juno lived in 241 there were still photos on the walls: Ben’s recitals, a few family selfies from road trips, one or two of Sarah’s prints. Empty nails littered the walls now, pillars in the desert. The twins’ room, now _Ben’s_ room, was on the left, door cracked open. Sarah’s was on the right; the cheap laminate-covered particle board of the door had a badly-patched hole in the middle, covered with duct tape. Straight ahead was the bathroom, unremarkable as it’d ever been.

In the screaming-bright crime scene lighting, the shadows of unoccupied rooms are impenetrable. The hall carpet is littered with detritus of Sarah’s life: pens, scraps of paper, empty pill baggies, a discarded shoe here, a pair of shorts there.

The next picture is a close up of the carpet itself. The yellow ruler is there in the lower left-hand corner. Blood droplets small enough to end a life drying to a flat brown indistinguishable from every other stain around them.

Juno sat there and stared at the blood on the floor of his family’s apartment. He could see Ben walking away-- that was the only thing they could ever do when Sarah got started on her bullshit, walk away from her, let her burn herself out. It made her madder but it was always safer and Ben has never been as good at it as Juno is.

The photos of Ben’s bedroom are cursory, nothing to be seen there: the bunk bed Ben’s ex-girlfriend dismantled and turned into a canopy bed for him, a dresser overflowing with clothes, the lock and bar on the back of the door. 

* * *

“Juno!” Mick’s knees hit the pavement beside Juno so hard the broken asphalt cuts into his knees through the thin protection of the duck-print pajama bottoms. “Hey, hey, JJ,” soft and coaxing, “you in there?” 

Juno sits against a dumpster with his knees tucked up, his arms folded loosely across the tops of them, staring into the middle distance. He’s not dressed anywhere near warm enough for the dead of night in Hyperion City. Glitter is smeared across his cheek and neck. One of his boots is mostly unlaced for no apparent reason. His comms unit dangles in his limp right hand; its screen is newly broken. To his left, the fifth of cheap whiskey is down to backwash and dregs.

Mick puts a firm, warm hand on Juno’s cold bicep. Juno jerks alert to stare at him.

“ _Hey_ ,” it comes out as a relieved laugh and Mick doesn’t take his hand off Juno’s arm, “there you are! What’s goin’ on, Juno?” He might feel better, though, if Juno’s knee-jerk reaction had been to hit him instead of just staring at him with those bright eyes that were still so blue in the dim.

It takes Juno a moment to find his tongue. “I -- I don’t.” He startles and his face twists, “I messed up, Mick.” 

“I know.” Hopefully, it comes out as reassuring. “It’ll be okay.” And because his mother in the back of his head insists he ask, just as gently as anything else coming out of his mouth, “Did you have anything with the whiskey, JJ?” 

“Vodka,” Juno sneers, “Few hours ago. Glimmer, probably. I… I’m not really sure how much." He mashes the heel of one hand into his eye socket, smearing his mascara worse. "Cass’s around here somewhere-- she said it’d help.” 

Mick eyes the glitter smeared across Juno’s skin in thick swathes and the raw skin around his nose; glimmer’s a yes, or maybe technicolor or, if it was a really bad night, maybe both.

“Alright, okay." Mick takes a deep breath to steady himself; it's going to be a long night. "We’re gonna get you up so I can take you home, okay? You think you can handle Delilah?” 

“Who’s Delilah?” 

“Aw, c’mon, you know Delilah,” he insists with teasing calm, focusing entirely on getting Juno steady and not the sick feeling in the pit of his own stomach. “Let’s go, up you get.” 

“You’re too tall,” Juno complains into Mick’s shoulder.

“You’re too short.” 

“‘m a _lady_ ,” Juno insists.

“You’re a very high, very drunk lady,” he agrees with a huff, irritated again despite himself. He didn’t know 11 months ago what kept Juno conscious on a binge and he doesn’t have a clue now. Spite, probably. 

Juno, instead of arguing, just looks at him, neither manic nor furious. He looks drawn. It makes Mick ache.

“I hope you didn’t have a jacket inside,” Mick says, bundling him into his own leather. It fits Juno poorly, too long in the arms, too tight across the chest, “‘cause I’m not goin’ in for it. C’m’ere, you remember Delilah. She’s my favorite lady-- after you, anyway. You’re gonna have to hold on.” 

* * *

Unit 241’s bathroom was a different story from the rest of the apartment. It was immaculately clean-- or it had been before Sarah shot Ben.

Juno could picture it. 

Ben would’ve headed there first, of course he would’ve, and Juno hated him for it a little. Ben’d been hit before and getting shot didn’t feel any different at first except maybe this was a little too much like a sucker punch to the kidney-- a deep searing pain that stole the breath and the stench of burning meat.

The sink was empty white ceramic marred only by the torn, yellowed paper of a packet of gauze. As if a single sheet of gauze would have done any good.

“Ben, you idiot,” Juno admonishes.

* * *

By some miracle of science or planetary alignment, Juno doesn’t vomit until Mick gets him off of the hovercycle. Delilah may be safe from the recycled whiskey but the same can’t be said for the shiny Cyclone Dart parked in the street just in front of Juno’s building. Mick doesn’t have the energy to feel bad about it, though, he just pulls Juno up and ushers him indoors. 

Juno snores against his shoulder in the elevator.

“You’re really movin’ up in the world, Juno,” Mick whispers to him and chuckles at his own joke, resting his chin on top of Juno’s head. Under the sweat and nightclub stink he can catch the faint scent of Juno’s shampoo: cheap and fruity, the same thing he’s used for a decade, and it’s almost nice to smell that familiar smell. “Gotta be careful, though, it’s a long way to fall.” 

The elevator let out a discordant chime to mark their arrival on the 6th floor. From there it was a clumsy stumble down the hall and to the left… and there was Juno’s snazzy corner unit, right where Mick remembered walking out of it almost a whole year ago to the sound of glass breaking against the door. The door that was unlocked.

Mick let the door swing open, suspicious.

Juno roused a little at the sudden stillness, “... didn’t wanna lose my keys.” 

“So you just left it unlocked?” 

“Yeah.” 

“That makes sense, I guess.” Mick is too tired to argue. He shrugs into the spartan expanse of Juno’s apartment and steers Juno toward the sofa.

* * *

“Hey, Juno... it’s me. I’m just calling ‘cause, uh—“

Sara is just barely audible in the background, shouting about something. 

_(Her pills. It’s always her pills.)_

“— ‘cause mom’s kinda... having a bad night? What I’m saying is dinner’s canceled.” 

Ben’s breathing is measured like he’s finished a show or coming off a panic attack. Sarah throws something in the other room; the resounding thunk is clear on the recording. 

“Rain check I guess? Don’t bother coming by the house, you don’t need to deal with this right now.”

A prolonged stretch of dead air before Ben says, sounding thin, “Juno, you know I love you, right?” 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all know how I live for your comments, right?


End file.
